Tag Archives: 19th century missions

Who: Captain Allen Gardiner (1794-1851) was a British Navy officer, explorer, and pioneer missionary to several indigenous people groups. He spent some time among the Zulus in South Africa, founding a mission station there. When the mission was no longer viable, he turned to the indigenous peoples of Tierra del Fuego.

Captain Gardiner is best known for the tragic end he met with his mission crew in Tierra del Fuego, but his exploits before that time were numerous and interesting.

The author, Jesse Page, authored a number of interesting and readable missionary biographies around the beginning of the 20th century.

Overview: Adventure stories captivated Allen Gardiner as a child, and his mother once found him sleeping on bare floor boards, “to accustom himself to roughing it some day” (loc. 205). In adulthood, he entered the Navy and travelled all over the world. He had a hairbreadth escape from death off the coast of Peru, in which he had to swim to shore.

Gardiner came to true faith after being impressed by missions work among the indigenous people of Tahiti. The transformation taking place there led him to reconsider his life, and eventually use his sailing skills for pioneer missions work.

His first few years of mission work (1834 to 1838) were spent among the Zulu of South Africa, and he published a narrative of this time. He founded a mission a Port Natal, which later became Durban. He left South Africa because of political turmoil and tribal issues.

His appeals for funding to the Church Missionary Society, the Wesleyan Missionary Society, and the London Missionary Society were all rejected. As a result, Captain Gardiner founded the Patagonian Mission in 1844, which later became the South American Mission. Although American missionaries are extremely active now in Latin America, it was then a neglected field, as Jesse Page takes pains to show.

The situation slowly increased in desperation until one by one his crew died of starvation over the course of a two-month period. The missions work, however, continued, and Allen Gardiner’s son also worked in missions in Patagonia.

Meat: The most impressive aspect of Gardiner’s life is his fortitude against material obstacles. He survived a number of treacherous voyages and shipwrecks. His missions lacked funding and were hedged in by political obstacles. In South Africa he dealt with tribal conflicts; in Tierra del Fuego he dealt with theft and treachery; finally, his crew of eight were stranded, but held out hope until the bitter end.

Bones: This book is concise and interesting but doesn’t provide any information about Gardiner’s pioneering strategy.

The author also seems to treat indigenous peoples as one unit, with one simplistic language, following the stereotypes of the time period. But we now know these stereotypes to be false, and their languages and customs to be more complex than a brief tour can justify.

Quotes: The most interesting passage from the book is undoubtedly the poem that Captain Gardiner penned while slowly dying on Picton Island:

“Some day the Church will wake up to its responsibility in this matter, and an impetus of zeal, something like that which created the China Inland Mission, will send forth the labourers by hundreds into this field, which is white with opportunity and need.” (loc. 1688)

Who: A memoir of Sarah Stallybrass, wife of Edward Stallybrass and British Congregational missionary to Siberia. Sarah taught (Mongolian) Buryat children while Edward worked on the translation of the Bible into Mongolian with a few colleagues.

When: 1789-1832.

Overview: This memoir is composed mostly of Sarah’s letters and journal entries, many of which focus on the trials that she went through and her lessons in submission to the Lord’s will in hard times. We follow the Stallybrasses as they sail through the Baltic Sea to St. Petersburg, where they trained in Russian, then thousands of miles overland across Russia to the far reaches of Siberia. After receiving the blessing of the Russian Emperor Alexander I, the Stallybrasses settled at Novoselenginsk near Lake Baikal. They later resettled even further out in Siberia. Sarah struggled with many medical problems, but toiled in raising her children and educating young Buryat children. Four months after they had resettled on the Khodon River with five children, their house burned down in the Siberian winter.

Meat: This biography focuses on Stallybrass’ personal thoughts and walk with the Lord during her travels to Siberia, and her stay there. Under the shadow of health issues and the toil of raising a family in one of the remotest parts of the earth, she maintained her life of prayer and her walk of faith.

Bones: Sarah Stallybrass quotes a wealth of hymns and draws on the richness of Christian tradition; but her view of Providence is one-sided, and makes no mention of spiritual warfare. For example, if we acknowledge that Jesus was sovereign over the weather, and commanded a storm to be calm, we should also admit that other forces had imposed upon this weather before Jesus commanded it.

Quotes: “The danger lies in confounding our success with the success of the great object we professedly regard.” (Joseph Fletcher, p. viii)

“If I have learnt anything more in the past year than in former ones, it has been that happiness dwells not in the throng; my happiest moments I find to be those spent in the [prayer] closet.” (p. 24)

“The Christian must not expect a cessation of his trials till he rests in the bosom of his God. The life of the Son of God was one of sufferings, from the manger to the grave.” (p. 64)